


Visions of Arda: Tolkien Fanart Vol. 1

by Alystraea



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Anfauglith, Beleriand, Cuiviénen, Fanart, First Age, Gen, Gondolin, Laurelin, Nargothrond, The Two Trees of Valinor, Third Age, Tirion, Valinor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-05
Updated: 2017-06-05
Packaged: 2018-05-24 22:11:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 30
Words: 1,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6168586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alystraea/pseuds/Alystraea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I know, not an original title but I couldn't think of anything else. Used to be "My Silmarillion Fanart" but that made no sense once I added LOTR and my fanfic art. This is a scrapbook charting my progress as a beginner digital artist, and I hope you'll enjoy it! ^_^</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Fall of Glorfindel

**Author's Note:**

> The art here is also on deviantArt under my pseuds annamare (for Tolkien fanart) or alystraea (for my fanfic-related art).  
> It looks pretty amateurish because I'm a beginner - I started drawing and painting at my ripe old age (kiddy sketches don't count) only in May 2015... all because I wanted to try my hand at art for my fanfic. The later pieces get better.  
> I have absolutely no art training unless you count awful compulsory lessons in school painting poster-colour still-lifes of vegetables and pottery at the ages of 13-14. [Edit: Feb-Mar 2017 I went for my first proper art lessons: an 8-session beginners' course on figure drawing using charcoal. It was enjoyable learning a traditional medium, and I think it helped a bit with sketching anatomy. Ch 26 & onwards were done after that.]  
> I don't get to draw and paint much, and I am pretty slow. The first few paintings were done with a free trial of Photoshop Creative Cloud, which I loved, but which I was too cheap to subscribe to after the trial ended. Everything else has been done with MyPaint 1.0, a simple freeware without all the bells and whistles of PS, but which has been good enough for me. I work on a Windows 10 laptop and use a Wacom Intuos tablet. The last stage of cropping and adding text is done with Gimp 2.8.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This first picture was done with the free Photoshop trial, and I was just beginning to get a feel of using a tablet. It's pretty rough. Could not find any pose ref for Glorfindel, and I could NOT draw or paint hair to save my life! I got so tired I gave up on the armour so it has a lot less detail than it should. I forgot to reflect fire off the sword. The balrog turned out better than I thought it would though!
> 
> I also chose to depart from canon in a few ways, as you can tell. The battle was at night but there was no way I could handle the lighting, so I made it day. He killed the balrog with his dirk, but who wants to draw and paint a dirk when you can do a full-sized sword covered in gore?? (The gore is red for the effect... black blood just didn't look right) The balrog should have lost his arm, but I left it on... the list goes on.
> 
> [Compare this to #19 Glorfindel in Armour done over a year later.]


	2. Finrod and Amarie: Years of the Trees

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I wanted a chance to draw the Trees, and an elven city. Then I decided to throw in a couple, and chose Fin and Am because they're sweet, and I had just painted darkness and demons in the Fall of Glorfindel. If you overlook the wobbly pencil sketch marks, I hope the colour scheme looks ok. I wanted a fairy-tale look, something like the medieval paintings of the Limbourg brothers.
> 
> The grass was a killer. I was still very unused to Photoshop, so I was drawing in each individual blade of grass with a round brush. I swear there are over a thousand of them in that stupid field. 
> 
> Valmar in the background, and the Trees, were fun to paint. But my pencil sketch marks for Valmar are bad; for the Trees, I was able to erase them.


	3. Finrod & Amarie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So the Photoshop free trial ended :( and I was too cheap and on too tight a budget to pay for the PS CC package (which also had bad reviews). Thanks to Irsanna on dA, I tried MyPaint. It's free! Yay!  
> These two portraits were done as I tried to familiarize myself with the program.  
> I was going through a tough time in RL then, and this was therapy and kept me going.  
> I don't like how Finrod turned out. It was a lesson to me what happens when you mess with a painting too much. I am quite happy with Amarie though - she turned out better than I had hoped!


	4. Cast into the Sea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I always had this image of Maglor's Silmaril lighting up the waters of the sea as it sank beneath the waves...  
> Was warming up to MyPaint at this point.   
> This is the second version of the same painting. Comments on dA suggested to me how I could fix the perspective for the whirlpool, so I did.   
> Eärendil's Silmaril is in the sky above.


	5. The horse and his elf

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I obviously have a thing for Glorfindel at this point in my life! Here is my favourite balrog slayer chilling with his faithful steed somewhere in Eriador.


	6. Glorfindel Battles the Balrog

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Again this thing about the sword vs the dirk...  
> Dammit, Professor! Why couldn't he have offed the balrog with the sword? Why???  
> It just looks so much better.  
> A lot of viewers saw that halo as the sun. If you want it to be night as in the book, see it as his hair. Or his holy-martyr saintliness.  
> I know the sword is too long. But if it wasn't, I wouldn't have been able to show as much of my balrog slayer as I wanted...  
> The balrog pose is screwed. I was too tired to fix it. Glorfindel is piercing the front of his neck, and that thing in the foreground was meant to be his shoulder.


	7. Asfaloth and Glorfindel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by a painting by yuumei on dA called Connection. It's a lovely painting and the pose, the lighting were all copied from her.


	8. Glorfindel and Maeglin in the Halls of Mandos

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Halls of Mandos are where the fëar (souls) of elves go after death for cleansing and healing before re-embodiment. I always disliked the idea of Gwîr/Vairë weaving actual tapestries, so here she is "weaving" scenes from the lives of the elves that she draws out from their spirits. The two elves are of course Glorfindel, the balrog-slaying hero of Gondolin, and Maeglin, the traitor who destroyed it because I wanted the contrast of light vs darkness, peace vs torment. Mandos/Námo isn't tormenting Maeglin, by the way... he's initiating the cleansing process, and Maeglin is tormented by his own memories. As for why I drew hröar (bodies) rather than formless spirits... well, it was way more fun! And it was an opportunity for my first ever attempt at male nude anatomy. I have so little time to draw (this is my first chance in three months!) that I want to make each piece I do count for something.  
> What killed me in this painting was drawing the story at the borders. I wanted to do stylized medieval-type line art, but... I just could not do it! The central figures of the picture were surprisingly fast to do, but that stupid border took me forever - three whole days - and I still don't feel it turned out the way I wanted. Hope you can see the details I suffered over. In the end I was so tired, I gave up on two scenes I wanted to add - Maeglin holding wounded Aredhel with the javelin in her shoulder, and a pieta-like scene of Glorfindel being mourned by Idril, Tuor and the refugees.  
> This is also an illustration for the first chapter of my fanfic "The Golden and the Black".
> 
> Oh, I tried the newest version of MyPaint (1.2) but it was horrible on my Windows10 laptop. So I have uninstalled it and re-installed the older version.


	9. Maeglin Lómion, Lord of the Mole

So I've decided to start a series on the Lords of the Twelve Houses of Gondolin while taking a break from writing (that last chapter of Golden and the Black was a bitch). I've now been drawing for one year, and I Iove it! Wish I'd started earlier. Wish I'd improve faster. Going to force myself to work on my weak areas - clothes, hair, anatomy, shading. Would love your feedback as I go...

[I was never really satisfied by how this turned out. I decided to do touch up and make Maeglin look  _really_ young, like the teenager he probably was by elven reckoning when he first arrived at Gondolin (yes he was of age, but in many countries 18 is the age of majority and look how mature most 18 year olds are). I seems repetitive to post the new touched up version here, so I'll just put this [link.](https://68.media.tumblr.com/65d64d42a0d73500d607822173859ab7/tumblr_oidur9sFnY1uniaq1o1_1280.png)]


	10. Glorfindel, Lord of the Golden Flower

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rather than paint Glorfindel in a mantle embroidered with golden celandine and his "arms damascened with cunning gold" (Fall of Gondolin) I decided to let him lie in a field of celandine, and I kept the bling to his weapons - a sword with a lion's head on its pommel (because with his mane of golden hair he does make me think of a lion) and a horse head on the handle of the dirk which he will in the end use to mortally stab the balrog.  
> I don't ever want to paint another leaf or flower of celandine ever again.  
> I struggle painting clothes, and at one point when good ol' Google was throwing up umpteen pose refs of bare bodied models,I was sorely tempted to do a series of the lords of Gondolin in their birthday suits... ;)  
> I've never painted anyone laughing before, and his expression is so far from what I pictured in my head I'm pretty dissatisfied with it. But the golden hair is a decided improvement on my earlier efforts I think!


	11. For Maglor took pity on them...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maglor, aka Makalaure Kanafinwe, aka Kano... always and ever my fave son of Feanor!  
> This is a corner detail of a larger WIP on Maglor that I began working on a few months ago - Maglor taking pity on Elrond and Elros.  
> You know that little story about Maedhros and Maglor finding Elrond and Elros playing at a waterfall? Never liked it, thought it a whimsy of Tolkien's to explain their names. That would beg the question - so what DID their parents call them before the kinslaying? And after all the horror of the kinslaying, the tale was just too twee for me. My headcanon has always been that Maglor found them amid the carnage, and spared them instead of killing them. It's real, it's gritty, it has a lot more pathos.


	12. In Pain and Regret

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maglor... the scenes left to right are him tormented by pain and about to cast the silmaril into the sea, the first kinslaying represented by the stolen swanships of the Teleri sailing across Belegaer, the third kinslaying at the Havens of Sirion, and last of all, his wandering alone "in pain and regret" singing the Noldolante.


	13. The Golden and the Black (cover art)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> By right, this doesn't belong here because it is for my Silm-LOTR crossover "The Golden and the Black". I have been trying to get into a writing mood, but all I feel like doing is painting... and my holidays are ending and I'll have to go back to work soon.  
> 

I initially intended to parody an epic movie poster, just for fun. Cartoonish orcs getting slaughtered, maidens clinging to Glorfindel like fangirls, and Maeglin brandishing the reforged Narsil... but in the end it turned out... well, like this... The original sketch had Elrond, Gandalf, Lindir, Aragorn, Thranduil, Legolas, Bilbo, Finrod, Earendil, Vingilot, Ecthelion, Aredhel, Eol and Nan Elmoth, but turned into a mega-mess, with the picture way too busy... and I got way too tired. Plus to be honest, I don't think I handle comical well (tho I will try drawing golden retrievers and kittens some day). I think most peeps would have been more interested in seeing the original concept than this overly serious one.

It was still a lot of fun working on this alternative composition, which I've had in mind since last year, and finally worked on over the last four days. That's supposed to be Mandos and Manwe on the left, and Morgoth on the right... sorry, the picture is so wide you'll have to scroll!


	14. Celegorm the Fair

Where does it ever say Celegorm was blond? Yet it seems almost fanon that he is. I don't buy that as I think Tolkien meant golden hair to be an exclusively Vanyarin trait (ok, we have the Woodland King described as golden-haired, but I have a whole other headcanon on that which I won't go into here). Celegorm "The Fair" to me has always meant "beautiful", so he's probably the most handsome among the seven sons (Maedhros the "well-shaped" one would have had the hottest bod I guess, and Celegorm the best face). I also headcanon him as silver-haired, as he could have gotten the genes from grandma Miriel. I have seen too few artists paint him as a non-blond, and I've always been happy when I do, so here's one more silver-haired Celegorm.   
Detail of a larger painting with hounds that I did. This is after unrequited love/lust for Luthien, after Huan abandoned him, after he was booted out of Nargothrond, after the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, and I imagine he's somewhere in Ossiriand.


	15. After Huan

I don't think Celegorm ever got over the loss of Huan. But I don't think he could have done without hounds as a hunter and lover of animals, so I headcanon him having a pack of shortlived/mortal hounds after Huan abandoned him. I also think of him being seriously messed up over Luthien though what he has for her can hardly be called love. If the sons of Feanor did roam around Ossiriand after the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, that wouldn't have been far from Tol Galen where Beren and Luthien lived. He could have roamed nearby woods hunting and thinking of her.   
  
And yes, I have already made a whole rant on why I believe Celegorm is silver-haired, not blond.

[And can I say how nice it is to login today and see that my art has 500 hits? Thanks, all! <3 ]


	16. Fallen Fire

Happiness is finishing and submitting work to the boss and having a few days to breathe more freely... and paint!

This was a difficult piece for me and I wondered several times why I was bothering. First, I couldn't find any pose references for the brothers, so a lot had to be from imagination. Then, I struggled with the fire on the flag. Then, I made it way too gory and then got nervous wondering what would constitute mature content on dA, so I cleaned them up. In the end, Glaurung in the bottom left corner proved the easiest thing to paint. 

I'm not terribly happy with how it turned out, but here it is, warts and all - Aegnor and Angrod during the Battle of the Sudden Flame, Anfauglith and Thangorodrim in the background. Aegnor's name means "fell fire" (or "sharp flame"), hence the title.


	17. Innocence

This was the fluff I drew to give myself relief from the darkness of  _Fallen Fire..._ Originally conceived as Angrod and Aegnor in Aman, but since the older boy turned out looking so much gentler and sweeter in expression than Angrod should, I've revised it to Orodreth with baby Angrod. Part of a larger work,  _The Time of Treelight._

(I used pose refs for the brothers & the puppy. Links are given on dA.)


	18. The Time of Treelight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finally found time to finish this! It was a horrible, rusty feeling when I started painting again after a total break of one month, and doing the latticework for the pavilion was killing.  
> Anyways, here is the House of Finarfin chilling out by the light of the two trees.  
> L to R: Orodreth and baby Angrod [originally meant to be Angrod with Aegnor], Telperion, Laurelin, Finrod, Finarfin, Earwen.


	19. Glorfindel in Armour

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here's Glorfindel by moonlight with the peaks of the Cirith Thoronath behind him as he faces the balrog on a high rock. I tried to reflect the balrog and its fire in his vambrace and on his armour but... yeah I know... failed. I decided this time round to be practical and give him a helmet, but I balked at giving him golden armour.  
> This was the first time I tried painting on a grey background instead of a white one, and I thought it worked quite well for the night scene.


	20. The First Elves - Cuivienyarna

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The legendary first elves after they awaken at Cuiviénen - Enel, Enelyë, Tatië, Tata, Imin and Iminyë.  
> I love stars though I don't get to see them much because of light pollution!  
> (Writer's block for the last chapters of The Golden and the Black has hit me, so I will be painting for a while...)


	21. And the King Had No Wife

This is Finrod sculpting a bust of Amarië after the completion of Nargothrond. (Kind of inspired by the Pygmalion and Galatea myth though of course poor lonely Finrod's statue isn't coming to life.)  
  
And this is the meaningless conversation I had with myself as I painted this:  
“…and I’ll make Amarië a life-sized statue.”  
“Nah. It might look creepy.”  
“You think?”  
“Make her a little smaller.”  
“OK.”  
_*draw draw paint paint*_  
“Argh!! I should have made her life-sized!”  
“Re-do her.”  
“No way! Not after all that work.”  
“Well, open the file in GIMP and scale her larger.”  
_*open GIMP. Select Amarië. Select Scale tool. FAIL. Select. Scale. FAIL. Repeat two more times.*_  
"You should stop being so cheap and just get Photoshop CC. It’ll work so much better.”  
“Shut up.”  
I'm a digital art idiot. And that’s why Amarië isn’t life-sized.


	22. Glorfindel with Battle Hair

 

Even though I always think of Glorfindel with his hair loose and flowing, I suddenly felt like painting him with a messy updo for battle. Blame it on writer's block.


	23. Golden Summer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ...or when Éowyn met Glorfindel. I had this in mind for ages and finally found time to paint it. I learned so much about light and colour as I did this one - I wanted it to be warm and soft and golden, and I had no idea how to do it. After three days of struggle and much trial and error I found out: add red to the shadows. Still not entirely how I wanted it, and I'm NEVER happy with how Glorfindel turns out, but this is great progress for me!
> 
> For my fanfic Golden Summer, one of my earliest and quite raw, but one which I'll always have a soft spot for.


	24. Duilin, Lord of the Swallow




	25. Lords of Gondolin WIP: Duilin, Galdor & Ecthelion

So I've been doing individual portraits of the Lords of Gondolin. Then I thought: why not paint all of them and Turgon in one painting?   
I discovered why not. Handling all eleven of them at one shot was way too much for me. Plus I hurt my right hand before Christmas, and it got worse and worse, and now it's been diagnosed as De Quervain's tenosynovitis and I'm wearing a thumb and wrist support almost all day. Can type, can't really write with a pen.  I'm not supposed to, but I was desperate to paint, so I finished one small part of it, very slowly. All the other lords and Turgon are standing to the right. It feels like I'm going to finish this only by Christmas at this rate!


	26. St Glorfindel

I began sketching this last year (don't ask me what I was thinking of - maybe it was medieval stained-glass windows with St Michael the Archangel), but it got held up by lots of things, including my hurting my hand, and work getting crazy, and my trying to finish writing The Golden and the Black. Anyways, you can see that the Glorfindel obsession continues...

I won't be drawing anything else for quite a while after this - need to focus on real life stuff. I'm happy to have finally finished it!


	27. Elf Meets Men

Finrod meeting Bëor and his people. It's my first time drawing edain, and it was rather fun doing the seven stages of men. The little boy in the middle is Bëor's son Baran, and the baby chomping on Finrod's hair is Belen.   
  
The right hand had a relapse of tenosynovitis, so this was done wearing a wrist and thumb support and with padding wrapped around my stylus. It worked pretty well and didn't hurt as long as I kept my wrist in neutral!


	28. Amarie of the Vanyar

This month marks the second anniversary of my taking up digital art as a hobby. One of my first paintings was a really awful piece of Amarie (which you can still see on my annamare deviantart account; initially I deleted my first works, but this one I'm keeping to remind myself how I started out) and I think I'll try to mark each anniversary by re-doing one of my early works. 

I think I'm proudest of the fact that so far I've been entirely self-taught as a painter. I'm very slow, and each piece undergoes a lot of trial and error, but I'm getting there. :p 


	29. By the Light of Laurelin (Fragment - Tirion)

The left side of a larger piece I'm still working on. That's Turgon and Elenwë at the bottom. 

Tirion is inspired by the magical painting of Tirion in David Day's Tolkien Bestiary, which I have loved since I was a kid. Some of the details on the buildings were inspired by Faberge eggs (seriously) and the detailed drawings of Tolkien cities by Mexican artist Rodrigo Contreras on deviantart (http://dracarysdrekkar7.deviantart.com/gallery/58086673/MIDDLE-EARTH).


	30. By the Light of Laurelin (complete)

 

Characters (L-R): Turgon, Elenwë, Amarië, and Finrod on horseback.  
Scenery (L-R):  
(1) Laurelin on Ezellohar  
(2) Tirion and the Mindon Eldaliéva on Túna in the Calacirya  
(3) Valmar  
(4) The Máhanaxar or Ring of Doom hiding in the far right corner  
(5) The Pélori mountains are in the background.

And with this painting I'll close my beginner's art scrapbook and start a new one. I feel more confident now and much happier with my art. Thanks for journeying with me!


End file.
